Beth Taylor and Brian Bannatyne-Scott sing Schumann
St Michael’s Church, 1 Slateford Road, Edinburgh, 14/8/24
Beth Taylor, mezzo, Brian Bannatyne Scott, bass, Michal Gajzler, piano
A performance worthy of the Edinburgh Festival
This was my judgement after the superb concert at St Michael’s Church on Wednesday afternoon. It was a concert very much on the geographical fringe of the Festival but whose quality compares well with the international festival. Brian Bannatyne-Scott is of course well known to readers of the Edinburgh Music Review as one of our principal writers but todays concert (and indeed last week’s concert in the New Town Church in George St, featuring Brian with other leading young singers) shows that he is still one of Scotland’s finest singers. Beth Taylor is again known to readers of the EMR, not least because Brian alerted us to her presence in an article some years ago predicting that she would soon be an international star. Since then Beth was a finalist in the Cardiff Singer of the World (many of us thinking she should have won it!). She has taken leading roles across Europe and been a star at Glyndebourne in successive seasons. Indeed she was taking a short break from Glyndebourne’s ‘Julius Caesar’ to sing in Edinburgh.
The concert was an all Schumann affair. As Brian explained in his programme notes, he wanted to return to singing Schumann’s great song cycle ‘Dichterliebe’ forty years after he first sang it at the Queen’s Hall. I didn’t hear him then but I’ve heard Dichterliebe many times at the Festival and Brian’s performance compared well to any of them. Beth sang Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe Und Leben’ (Women’s Love and Life) and displayed her glorious mezzo voice which in colour and range is extraordinary. At times she goes as deep as a baritone but can still reach the high notes. Beth is already well established on the international opera scene and has an excellent agent and I predict she will become an international star of the highest order.
After an afternoon of great sadness and beauty, we end on a lighter, albeit slightly menacing, note. As an encore Brian and Beth sang a duet arrangement of ‘a song about Lorelei’. Not, as it turned out, Clara Schumann’s famous setting of Heine’s poem about the witch who lures sailors to their deaths on a dangerous stretch of the Rhine, but Robert Schumann’s lesser known setting of ‘Waldesgespräch’ by Joseph von Eichendorf. In this an optimistic young man attempts to accompany a beautiful lone rider through a deserted forest late at night. She discourages and warns to no avail until the young man realises in horror, ‘Du bist di Hexe Lorelei’ and begs for mercy. Beth’s unbending, stern ‘Kommst nimmermehr aus diesem Wald’ sends shivers down our spines.
Beth and Brian were superbly accompanied by Polish born pianist Michal Gajzler who nowadays based in Scotland. There was a decent audience turnout in the splendid surroundings of St Michael’s, which sadly is on the list of churches to be closed by the Church of Scotland (from December 2026), but in the meantime has a very good music programme. This concert was one of the best.
